Investigates the effects of varying the motivational context of verbal rationales on children's compliance with prohibition. Results indicate that children who received other-oriented rationales performed a greater amount of work and were less likely to show decrements in working over time than did subjects who received self-oriented rationales.…

Three studies compared effects of different rhythmic contexts on order judgments of targets embedded in auditory patterns designed to manifest auditory stream segregation. The magnitude of the captor effect varied with temporal predictability of flanking and/or target tones. A pairwise rhythm was likely to improve judgments by facilitating…

Results indicated that, for all but one of eight autistic children, visual discriminations were acquired significantly faster, with fewer errors, when the S+ stimulus was faded first. These findings are related to the literature on the effects of stimulus novelty on selection and learning. (Author/RH)

Apparently, six-month-old infants can encode a location relative to a landmark, but in many situations their visual search behavior is dominated by a learned egocentric code. (RH)

Four groups of infants, 4 1/2 to 5 1/2 months of age, were presented with repeated speech stimuli which were synthesized exemplars of the sound, "baba," natural exemplars of "baba" or "kaba," or novel syllables on each trial. (RH)

Reports the major findings of a study that investigated the effectiveness of using pictures of different art styles (stick figures, faceless outline drawings, detailed black-and-white, detailed black-and-white with watercolor wash, and black-and-white photographs) with 423 new readers in Papua New Guinea. (JD)

Subjects watched animated films depicting the simultaneous movements of two triangles toward a goal. One triangle was pushed by an external object while the other triangle was not. Initially, only college students understood the discounting principle. Kindergarten children, second graders, and fourth graders did not. Revision of the film produced…

Immediate recall measures on one or both types of stimuli were recorded under two conditions: (1) in which stimuli were close together and (2) in which they were separate. Results indicated that normal children selectively attended significantly better than LD children under Condition 1 but not in Condition 2, in which both groups were equal.…

To determine if the location or type of a picture affects reading comprehension, college students read a passage and then answered multiple-choice questions that assessed different types of incidental learning. Subjects who viewed a picture after reading the passage scored higher than those who viewed before reading. (Author/JEG)

The ability of 18-, 24-, and 30-week-old infants to learn conceptual categories regarding adult female faces was examined using a habituation paradigm. (JMB)

Examined acuity thresholds for 1- and 2-month-old infants by presenting square wave gratings in a preference paradigm at four viewing distances. (Author/JMB)

Image size, viewing angle, and contrast affect performance of a visual discrimination task. Further, the three factors interaction in their effect on performance. (Author)

Assessed 14-week-olds' attention to green or red target objects moving in a field of distracting objects that varied in color. Found that infants' detection of green moving targets was masked in the presence of mixed red and green objects. Masking was not observed for red targets or for green targets in a field of green objects. (BC)

Investigated simultaneous occurrence of emergent stimulus-response relations (functional equivalence) and stimulus-stimulus relations (stimulus equivalence). Trained 4- and 5-year olds to emit specified responses to pairs of stimuli in one setting (original training) and to emit other responses to one member of each pair in another setting…

Presents data from South African Sign Language (SASL) to exemplify the fact that sign languages are able to represent action or events from more than one perspective at the same time. Describes the different ways in which these multiple perspectives may be created and looks specifically at the role of classifier predicates in the creation of…